Pertinent Observations

met prof. BS Ramachandra Rao (BSR) today. A retired professor of maths from IIT Bombay, BSR now teaches at BASE, the biggest JEE coaching center in Bangalore. was talking to him about the JEE pattern change.

He said that the basic motivation for the IITs was to reduce the burden of valuation of answer scripts which no one wanted to do. Apparently, IITD has been outsourcing valuation of answer scripts to DU profs since none of their profs want to do it. Similarly with IITK. And there have been no quality checks on these valuations which might be producing fraudulent results. Remember that even a couple of marks here or there in the JEE can move you by a few hundred ranks.

I then asked him as a coaching factory teacher, how he has reacted to the changes. He replied that the focus now was on concepts (as I had predicted) and that his teaching methodology hadn’t changed except that he doesn’t work out long problems in class now. He was a little pissed that the other teachers in the factory had changed their methods too much and have started neglecting concepts – which he maintained were still paramount.

Interesting… and yeah, he hadn’t read my article in the papers. Said he would this evening.

Fifth term. Time when grades don’t matter. Time to “build up” one’s resume, in terms of co-curricular activities. Such as publishing papers and writing business plans. Huge demand for paper and business plan competitions. Huge supply also, with various B Schools and B school recruiters holding similar competitions. Time for fraud. Also, time for Google Ctrl+C Ctrl+V.

Coming from a background such as CS@IITM, it’s hard to fathom a fraud paper. Most profs there indulge in (or try to indulge in) “cutting edge research”. Try get new results, and publish in international journals/competitions. Takes months to produce a paper, unless it’s a “Delta paper” – one which is an incrememntal improvement on an existing paper – which are not well looked upon by peers.

Most papers in B Schools aren’t even delta. No MBA student wants to publish in international journals/conferences. Not even national. Inter-B School competitions would suffice. Sufficient enough for that line in the resume which might ensure a shortlist – prepared by one who had written similar papers a few years ago.

These paper presentation competitions are part of “business fests” (i’ll write a separate post about them later). A list of topics is given for paper presentation. The topics would’ve been chosen carefully – careful enough that it is impossible to do any original work on them (that is necessary to maintain the clique, you see). A thousand papers arrive from the top B Schools in India. Each one more fraud than the other. Typically the chosen ones would be the ones which quoted the maximum number of references.

Move over to the next biz fest. And the next such paper presentation competition. Topics are identical. Small changes are made in the papers and sent to this new place. If you send the paper to a hundred fests, you’re sure of being selected in one. You might even win if it’s one organized by a “lesser B school” where there won’t be too many other teams from top B schools.

I too got sucked in into this clique a few days back. Gave in an extremely fraud paper. Happy i’ve gotten out of the thing now. Simply don’t feel like writing any fraud stuff. And as I mentioned earlier, the topics don’t allow for any non-fraud stuff.

Based on some learnings from the networking course I did three years ago in IITM. Was one hell with a slave driver of a prof. Had a good assignment group though, so had some fun also.

The three way protocol is used to keep in touch with long-lost friends/relatives. It goes like this:
1. I send him/her a mail saying “hi i’m skimpy, hope you remember me” and all that
2. He/she replies with “yeah of course i remember you, hope you’re fine. i’m working at XXX. what are you upto?”
3. I reply to that mail, with more fundaes about my life.

I don’t get a reply to that mail.

Has happened multiple times, with multiple people. Sometimes it does get extended and you have enuff material to rebuild the friendship rather than just “keep in touch”.

But on most occasions, it ends in three. After all, both messages have been acknowledged. And this can’t go on for ever (remember the red army – white army problem in Tanenbaum?). And the minimum number of messages to ensure both is three. Simple, isn’t it?

And not so long ago I used to be extremely pissed if people didn’t reply a second time. Until I started doing so myself!!

It all started with a scratch when Schaum Knott and I felt that IITM, despite being host to the country’s greatest college quizzing challenge, didn’t host an open quiz worth its salt. We roped in bofi and A Mani as co-quizmasters and bhaand as coordinator of administrative affairs and held the first edition of the IITM National Open Quiz on 18th April 2004. Despite Murphy being in full form that day, it was a fair beginning and QED emerged winner amongst 150 teams.

The Hallmarks of this quiz were the “modified infinite bounce” format (which has become a standard at IITM and IIMB), “closed book themes” (which has been adopted by, among others, the Karnataka Quiz Association), a 72-visual connect and for perhaps the first time at IITM, questions on a powerpoint slide-show.

The third edition of the quiz was held yesterday (the October 2nd National holiday slot has been “captured” by the IITM open; Landmark is on Independence day and Odyssey on Republic Day). Much better organized than the first edition which we organized (for details of the second edition, refer bhaand’s blog). The ambience was amazing, infra was in perfect order (all thanks to Baju, the “organizing secretary”), there was a new electronic scoreboard and yeah, the much-maligned acoustics was given a face-lift with new Bose speakers.

All of fifteen hundred people turned up, from places as “far flung” as Hyd and Bombay. Questions, as usual, were excellent and well-researched; and an attempt was made to make it a junta-quiz, though at no point of time did it show up as a quiz show.

There were some usual cribs though – too much of Europe, too much Christian Theology, not much sport, unfairness in part points, etc. However, such cribs are an integral part of any huge quiz and can thus be forgiven.

All in all, feeling damn proud to have started something which has now taken off on such a huge scale.

i had recently written an essay on the recent reforms in the IIT-JEE. To give it more publicity I had given it to our student media cell (which, except for a jarring abberation, is a pretty well-run organization) and they had sent it to a few newspapers.

The Times of India has published it as a front page article in today’s education times. Takes up around 4/5th of the top half of the front page, with teh other 1/5th devoted to Prof. CNR Rao (JNCASR) ‘s views on the same.

Whatz more, they have published the article exactly as I have sent it – they said that since it is an opinion based article, they are against editing it and asked me to make some changes by myself. Kind of ethics not expected from the ToI !!

Anyways, i’m feeling kicked that I managed my first “publication” in a national scene. Hope I can write a few more good ones.

As I had told you last week, I had “gone on strike” and refused to take up a certain responsibility on behalf of the finance club in IIMB which i’m part of. I had said that I wasn’t confident of doing a good job of it and hence didn’t want to give false promises.

Inspite of my backing out, others in the team decided to take up the responsibility and the worst i had feared had happened – i was not confident on the data sources we required for the project. it turns out that they haven’t been able to locate a good enough source. so the entire project has been scrapped .

When i was told this by a teammate today, my first reaction was “I told you so”… Dunno if i should feel guilty about this…

I started off as a rebel. Used to question everything and did nothing unless i was convinced about its usefulness. Mom gave up on me trying to make me religious. I was the teacher’s nightmare in school and my parents used to be frequently called for complaints. I was later made school captain and i started functioning as a student union leader. However, i made sure I wasn’t sacked.

Then new blood (i.e. me) joined that institute (IITM) and quickly got subdued. I was forced to conform. People in the hostel suppressed my madness with constant banter. For a week I remember everyone avoided me. Because I was being myself. They tried to condition to behave the way everyone else there did. People would try and interfere with me every other moment. Having had a major personal disappointment just prior to joining IIT, i needed friends. And the only way i could make them was by conforming.

Then, there were complaints to my parents from my relatives that I’d become too arrogant. “It’s all because he has joined IIT”, they said. Parents, unfortunately, took their advice and tried to “reform” me. At one point, I even landed up on a psychiatrist’s couch. Nothing came out of it.

Yeah, I had become a “good boy”. Every action of mine was well thought of. I used to doubly check that I wasn’t offending anyone before doing or saying something. I religiously listened to my parents even when they said ridiculous stuff like “you should not be seen in public with a girl of your age”! LOL! I stopped playing games because I “wasn’t good enough” at them. Tried my best not to offend anyone. Did only “socially acceptable” stuff. I was indeed the “good boy”, pleasing all and offending none.

Then, suddenly to my surprise, I found out that I had lost all confidence in myself. Good but not great grades didn’t help either. Extra currics also suffered big time. As I became the modest wimp, I had lost all faith in myself. I ended up not enjoying IIT life as much as I should have.

Thankfully, somewhere down the line, I did one sensible thing and wrote CAT. 2 years in an IIM would give me another opportunity at a similar institution and opportunity to make new friends. My confidence started rising in 4th year at IIT. At the same time I started throwing tantrums.

First few days in IIMB I tried to be a “pseud” guy. Fell flat on my face. Returned to the “wimpy” mode. Had a jolly good time in 1st term, except for a personal disappointment. Started faring pretty well in both acads and extra currics. But still every action of mine was guided by the “shouldn’t offend” thought. The life I lived and the life I wanted to live were totally different. I wasn’t at all happy with myself and used to cry every other day (almost).

Somewhere down the line, I think i’ve changed back. Dunno how I did it though. Probably through spending time with myself. My confidence has never been higher. I have become exremely self-centered and arrogant. I shirk from responsibilities. I do only those things which I believe are useful. I live by the instinct and continously follow my heart. I forget my duties. I refuse to help people if I don’t want to help them. Have become a kinda “bad boy” now. Don’t know what people think of me and it doesn’t matter also. What matters most is that I am happy now. I have been on a perennial high for the last few days!

You must have a healthy disrespect for conformity and a healthy respect for rebellion.
– Prof. Ramnath Narayanswamy, as part of the course “Tracking Creative Boundaries”

My maternal grandmother passed away early this morning. Had been suffering for a long time from a multitude of illnesses. Hence it didn’t come through as a shocker. In some sense it was a kind of relief that her suffering has been put to an end. May her soul rest in peace.

Would like to put down some thoughts that kept going round my head earlier this morning. It is a slightly impersonal view and you people might think i’m heartless and stuff. However, the fact that it wasn’t that much of a shock meant that I could observe stuff clearly. And there were thousands of stuff I could write about. And this is only a summary of my thoughts earlier this morning.

Granny lived with my mom’s eldest sister (who’s unmarried) and a housekeeper. Death happened around 1:30 am. Aunt called up my uncle who lives nearby. He quickly arrived, saw granny had passed out and went to the nearby Ramakrishna Hospital. Asked for a doctor to come and confirm the death. A thousand bureaucratic hassles followed. They cribbed big time. Finally sent a nurse in an ambulance to the house (which is bang next door to the hospital). Who confirmed the death. And charged Rs. 500. And refused to issue death certi.

Me went there at 2 am. Then went off to an aunt’s house nearby to crash. Went back at 8. The place was swarming with people. Hundreds had come to offer their condolences. Including very distant relatives. And a fire had been lit in front of the house. People were crying all round. Some were philosophising. Others just talked about the recent ganguly-chappel spat.

Found myself in an awkward situation. 16 hours of Floyd a day means i’m perennially high and always smiling. Found it tough to put a woresht look on my face which everyone else had done. Was pretty embarrassing actually. My granny, who i had lived with for a large part of my life had passed away. Relatives from far and near had come and had broken into tears. Worst case they looked pretty hassled and upset. And there i am, with a “normal” look on my face talking to people as if nothing has happened!

Then, the ceremonies happened. Granny had “booked her own funeral in advance” some time back. One phone call and people from this funeral service came armed with a hearse van, a priest, puja equipment and what not. They had even booked a slot at the crematorium. I hear that even the ceremonial rites which will go on for the next 13 days have been arranged for!

The corpse was brought to the courtyard (an uncle remarked how till a minute before death the person is referred to by name and then immediately after he/she becomes “the corpse”. he talked about some soul level stuff…). We had to pour rice on granny’s mouth and then go touch her feet. But it was a little spooky so i just did a namaste instead of touching her feet.

Then there is this woresht funda that you shouldn’t eat/drink anything between the time you come to know of the death and you’ve seen the corpse and then had a bath. Me got slightly screwed as my head was throbbing as i gulped down some bananas as soon as i got out of bath at 1 pm. Dad was in a much worse state. He broke fast only at 3 pm as he’d accompanied the corpse to the crematorium and he’s diabetic and has recently had a surgery. dunno how he did it. the lengths to which people go to appease society!

Then there’s the funda that when people who accompanied the corpse return from the crematorium, no one is supposed to SEE THEM until they’ve had a bath. VERY SHADY. and i questioned it and got a pasting from mom (who has been pretty upset). And no food is supposed to be cooked at home. After i had my bath, i went to a restaurant which sells wholesale meals and brought stuff for the people.

The superstitions seem very arbit and laughable. But i’m not allowed to question it. I’m sure they had SOME funda behind them when they were framed ages ago. Sad part is they haven’t changed with advances in technology. I think that is a fundamental problem with many people in India today. and also in the past.

We had a glorius ancient history. But our people in the medieval age refused to adapt themselves to the changing world. And got left behind, forever. Even now, many laws refer to acts passed way back in the 1800s! Yet another instance of inertia. Really pissing off.

Another fundamental problem with many people here is that you are not allowed to ask questions. Generations have been brought up on a diet of suppression and conformity. No wonder most of our industry today relies on being “techno-coolies” rather than being at the frontiers of technology and innovation! Which reminds me, I was supposed to attend a conference on Innovations and patents in India. Couldn’t go because of this unfortunate event.

Then this thing about “you should always respect elders and listen to them, no matter how stupid they are.” Yet another cultural issue which hinders progress.

of late i’ve become highly individualistic, arrogant, self-centered, short-tempered, etc. Just the way i was in late 12th standard or when i just entered IIT.

and as of now, i’m yet to experiences the repercussions of being this way (i’ve been like this for the last 6 months). and i’m pretty much enjoying life. and i’m also confident about myself (almost bordering on overconfidence) – confidence was something i sorely lacked during the last 3.5 years of life at IIT when i tried to be a “good boy”.

peace!